Confronting our Privilege in Petionville

This weekend we journeyed to Petionville for a classy celebration. Confronting our privilege made many of us uncomfortable. It’s easy to pretend that we are roughing it down here, that somehow being in Haiti is comparable to living in Haiti. Yea, it’s rough to smother myself in bug spray and fasten my mosquito net while choking down quinine to prevent malaria. You know what’s worse? Getting malaria because I don’t have access or cant afford these luxuries.

So Petionville. Eating an expensive small-portioned nutrition rich meal on the top floor of a restaurant called The View is not what most of us had in mind when we came to Haiti. As we played the $600 bill we made some uneasy jokes about trickle down economics. In order to feel better about flashing our wealth around we argued that spending money in Haiti was one of the best things we could do for Haiti.

The evening left us with questions and a deep-seeded need to debrief the situation. The truth is, it’s disrespectful to pretend that we don’t have privilege. Acting like we don’t have the means to treat ourselves to a fancy birthday celebration in a restaurant frequented by wealthy Americans is disingenuous and patronizing to people who actually don’t have the means.

This leads me to a bigger question of what I am doing here. There is a tendency among people doing NGO work in Haiti to get used to the reality of poverty. There is that cliché comment about people surviving hardship with smiles on their faces. This kind of attitude is a result of cultural relativism, and we don’t want to impress our cultural beliefs on the Haitian people. It’s easy to make this mistake because culture and privilege are intertwined. They may be intertwined, but there is a difference between culture and poverty.

Accepting results of poverty as aspects of culture is a dismissal of suffering. As volunteers and interns who are hoping to make the world a better place we cant mentally mitigate suffering. It’s hard to confront our privilege because it’s hard to confront the reality of people without that same privilege. We shouldn’t flaunt our wealth and use it in ways that hurt people, but living a healthier happier life because of our good luck could be a way to respect people who have not been blessed in the same way.

That being said, I probably won’t dine at The View again, it was much more expensive than anywhere I eat in the U.S. and its too formal for me and my jean shorts held together by safety pins. It’s just important to keep in mind that if I skip a fancy dinner it doesn’t mean that said dinner goes to someone who can’t afford it. The economics of globalization are WAY past that point. I’m trying to point out the importance of appreciating the gifts we have, and rather than eschewing them in an act of supposed self-sacrifice. We should take advantage of them, use them, and spread the gifts around. Share the gifts.